Sunday, January 27, 2013

Blogathon 32: Monthly Quality (Part 1)

It all comes down to the readers. The Image founders proved that readers would wait. Marvel proved that readers would buy the next issue no matter who the artist is. Really, it's about what people will buy. Apparently, we don't care. We'll wait or we won't. It doesn't matter. Whoop dee fuck.

Of course, the conflict is there between the things I said were proven. What happened to the skilled artist that could produce monthly? They skill exist, obviously, but why are they the rarety? Some say advances in printing technology mean that pages must be packed with more detail. I can see that argument, but it doesn't seem like an automatic to me. I look at Kirby's pages and I look at the pages of these slow, 'detail-focused' artists and, I've got to say, I'm not favouring the latter. Detail doesn't mean quality. Now, you're not going to do better than Kirby, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. I'm convinced that that's what Romita, Jr. is doing these days...

Now, maybe I'm not the best person to listen to about favouring the deadline most of all (see... um, almost every post I've written today...). Nor do I necessarily believe that. However, there's something to be said about a company's willingness to stick to a schedule. Of course, Marvel doesn't help matters by creating a schedule that, literally, only Jack Kirby could meet. And Kirby's dead. Not the best fucking plan.

But, this issue over artists seems like the biggest problem when it comes to maintaining consistent quality on comics. We've got the writers, we've even got colourists working in a heavyhanded style to maintain some visual consistency... But, it comes down to the line artists. Their ability to meet a deadline. A reasonable deadline would be nice. It really would. Knowing that next issue will look something like this issue would be nice. I was just writing about Uncanny X-Force and, holy fuck, are those issues between Esad Ribic and Jerome Opena's return dreadful. Just awful, ugly, subpar (by the standards set by the likes of Opena). And, yet, there they are. Fucking up the third trade of that series. And that's how it will be forever until I get the money to pay Opena and Dean White to redo the art for my own private edition of that comic. Maybe it will read better than, because it reads like shit now.

Artists interpret and present the writing and they can fuck it up in such obvious ways that I am surprised that anyone would take chances with that. More than that, it's sad to see them pretend like artists are somehow interchangeable. Oh wait. No, that's us, the readers. See, the Image founders proved that we'd wait... and then they took advantage and we got sick of fucking waiting. Now, we'll take a new comic with any hack's scribblings, because, hey, it beats waiting seven years for yet another promise that the issue is almost done. They had it and, then, they lost it. We all fucked up. Whoop dee fuck.

In 30 minutes, Ryan K. Lindsay will share his thoughts and probably use "fuck" less.

[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]

About

Chad Nevett has a BA in English and political science, and an MA in English Language & Literature--Creative Writing. He was a reviewer for Comic Book Resources, blogger for Comics Should be Good, and writer for 411mania. He resides in Windsor, Ontario with his wife and her cat. He can be reached at chevett13[at]yahoo[dot]ca.